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Secure Text and Email, Smartphone Physicals, and EMR Documentation – Around Healthcare Scene

There are so many types of mHealth apps and devices out there, it was inevitable that someone would try to have them work together. At TEDMED 2013, Shiv Gaglani and a team of physicians-to-be will be presenting the “smartphone physical.” Are these types of visits closer to becoming a reality than we may have realized?

One of the amazing technologies that have been developed is a smartphone that measures vitals – maybe this will be used in smartphone physicals someday! The Fujitsu Smartphone analyzes subtle changes in blood flow and determines vital signs, all by the user taking their photo with the phone’s camera. It goes to show that you don’t necessarily need fancy equipment to have incredible mHealth technology.

While some are concerned about the safety of email and texting for healthcare communication, it’s becoming a way of the future. Companies such as Physia and docBEAT are working specifically to make email and texts more secure. So which one is better? Both have their pros and cons – texting is quick and to the point, while email can take more time. Which would you rather receive?

Most doctors will agree, the current documentation options that EMRs offer are frustrating. There’s just too much clicking. However, the tide is shifting and it is very possible full keyboards will be needed. And the need for point of care EMR documentation will be more necessary than ever before.

With the current budget proposal by President Obama, EMR vendors might be impacted significantly. The ONC is suggesting that health IT vendors pay up to $1 million in fees. With the upcoming expiration of the ONC’s $2 billion appropriation from ARRA, the agency is needing some new funds. It also would help maintain ONC’s Certified Health IT Product List. Of course, vendors will not be happy to hear this news.

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April 14, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  HIPAA
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EHR and mHealth Successes and Fails: Around Healthcare Scene

Patients are somewhat taught to fear sharing medical data. While privacy is important, especially when it comes to health, being more willing to share medical data can yield great results. The key is knowing who to share information with, and who to avoid. 

EHR vendors can be tricky when it comes to keeping clients around. Sometimes, they don’t really have a choice because the EHR holds client information “hostage” when the client says they are switching EHRs. However, this is a sneaky tactic, and there are many other ways to keep an EHR client longer — most importantly, providing a great product.

While many aspects of HIT have come to a halt, mHealth continues to flourish. There are many things that other parts of HIT can learn from mHealth’s success. First, mHealth doesn’t focus on every patient at once. Next, it is an unregulated industry. And finally, the projects are marketed directly to consumers and paid for by them as well. 

Are you a hospital leader and curious about what technologies you should be watching out for? Well, the ECRI Institute has compiled a list of technologies they feel executives should be looking at this next year. This list includes Electronic Health Records, mHealth, imaging and surgery, and more. 

When an EHR fails to work correctly, how do physicians deal with it? Researchers have observed clinical workflows to answer just that question. The observations concluded that while there was no correct answer, many use paper to record information. Hopefully, this study will show EHRs where their gaps are, and help them to correct them.

There are so many consumer medical devices out there. What makes one stand out from the best? And which one has the best form factor? Wrist bands or chest straps…hand held or pocket stored? Chime in over at Smart Phone Healthcare.

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March 31, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR Market  EHR Recruiting  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  HIE  Hospitals  Meaningful Use  PHR
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MyPassport, Transcription Costs, and CDC App — Around Healthcare Scene

Hospital EHR and EMR

Hospitals Beware: EMR Copy and Paste Common

EMR Templates can be helpful, but also makes life harder as well. A recent study found that 82 percent of progress notes by residents had 20 percent or more copied and pasted material. This function is tempting for physicians who need to cut time somewhere, but its something that needs to be watched out for and prevented.

iPad App Helps Patients Understand Inpatient Care Process

In an effort to eliminate confusion that often comes during an inpatient stay, Boston Children’s Hospital has developed an iPad app. The app, called MyPassport, helps patients understand more about what is going on during their stay. It displays photos of doctors and nurses, others involved in care, as well as lab results that have been condensed to patient-friendly terms.

EMR, EHR, and HIPAA

EHR Benefit — Transcription Costs Savings

This is the next part of the EHR benefits series. Many doctors were thrilled to give up their transcription for an EHR in hopes of saving costs. However, some are feeling that their EHR may not be the best solution after all. Because of this, some are wanting to implement transcription services again. So, for some, eliminating transcription may not have saved as much money as some had hoped.

Mixing Physical, Mental Health Data Lowers Readmissions

Physicians aren’t often given access to the psychiatric records of patients they are treating. However, a study by Johns Hopkins found that perhaps they should be. The study showed that a signficant percentage of patients whose physicians had access to both physical and mental health data had a smaller readmission rate than those whose mental health records weren’t available.

Smart Phone Healthcare

CDC Launches New Mobile App

The CDC is getting into mHealth with the recent release of their mobile app. The app has many different features, such as health articles, quizzes, and a news room with information outbreaks or other pertinent information. The app is free and definitely one that should be downloaded if you enjoy hearing about health news.

Google Gets Into Activity Tracking

After the failure of Google Health, Google is making an attempt to get into the activity tracking world. “Google Now” basically turns the phone into a personal tracking device, including for fitness. It isn’t as accurate as some of the more sophisticated tracking devices out there, but it is a lot easier to use because it is embedded into the phone. It may make it easier for people to

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January 20, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HIPAA  Medical Devices
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Disaster Planning, Horrors of Generic HIT Training, and Snap.MD: Around Healthcare Scene

EMR and HIPAA

Disaster Planning and HIPAA

Unfortunately, it appears that far too many healthcare providers don’t follow this rule. There aren’t very many that even have an emergency plan in place. However, this will soon need to be remedied. HIPAA security general rules state that not only must a patient’s privacy be protected, but the ePHI is available at all times — even in the case of an emergency. All healthcare providers, regardless of size, will need to implement some kind of disaster planning, regardless of their situation, in order to be in compliance with these regulations.

EMR Add-On’s that Provide Physician Benefit

MedCPU is a part of the inaugural NYC Digitial Health Accelerator class. They have developed a new concept that will likely to very helpful to many. It analyzes free text notes and structured data, and checks for compliance with rules and to identify any deviances. The company described one hospital using the services the company provides as a benefit given to doctors who use EHR. This is just one of many add-ons available, but some are seeing them to be a large reason why some doctors want to adopt EMRs.

Hospital EMR and EHR

Video: The Horrors of Generic HIT Training

Need a break from the day-to-day monotony? Be sure to check at this video on the horrors of generic HIT Training. It “offers a wry take on what happens when EMR training isn’t relevant for the doctor who’s getting the training. In this case, we witness the plight of a heart surgeon who’s forced through a discussion on primary care functions that she neither wants nor needs.”

Study: EMR ROI Stronger In Low-Income Setting

A recent study revealed something interesting. Hospitals in low-income areas actually may have a decent return on investment when an EMR is integrated. Three different areas were looked at and analyzed, and it was found that after five years of having an EMR, the hospital examined had a net benefit of over $600,000. Not all hospitals will benefit this much, but it’s encouraging to see more EMR success stories popping up.

Smart Phone Healthcare

Get Peace of Mind and Avoid the ER With Snap.MD

It’s the middle of the night, and your child breaks out in a rash all of his or her body. The doctor’s office doesn’t have middle of the night, on-call doctors, so the only option is the ER, right? Maybe not for long. Snap.MD, a new telemedicine system, may help parents decide if the Emergency Room is the best course of action. Parents of pediatric patients are connected to physician, who will help evaluate the situation via video conferencing.

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November 25, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  EHR Recruiting  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  HIPAA  Meaningful Use  Medical Devices  mHealth  Privacy
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Will Meaningful Use Affect M&A In The EMR Space?

As some of you may recall, Allscripts is said to be floating the possibility of selling out to a venture capital firm. This follows several months of tumult at the board level, including some who might have been helpful in keeping its merger with Eclypsis moving forward.

I’ve been thinking about this deal for a while, wondering whether it would come to fruition and if so, what would make it happen. And I’ve realized an Allscripts deal, or other EMR company sale, might give us a window into just how valuable Meaningful Use criteria have proven to be. Let me explain.

If I was a EMR vendor looking for an acquisition or merger, I’d certainly look at the usual metrics, including the customer list, code base my target had in house, maturity of the product line, the extent to which in-house programming talent could support the roadmap and so on. (Naturally, I’d go over its books in depth too.)

But that’s not all. These days we have some new perspectives from which to evaluate the success of EMR vendors, a set of standards which are fairly unique in the software business.  Two important examples: We can look at how successfully a vendor’s customers have been able to meet Meaningful Use goals to date, and how far along the HIMSS EMR Adoption Model customers are as well.

While both are interesting, Meaningful Use is more important, as it’s such a politically fraught, complicated and rapidly evolving set of standards. In short, I’d argue that if a vendor’s customers are doing well with MU, then it’s likely the vendor is doing something right.

Now, you can’t draw a straight line between the quality of a vendor’s product and how well its customers  have done in qualifying  for Meaningful Use. Implementation is ultimately the hospital or doctor’s responsibility, even if the provider pays for EMR vendor consulting to get things going. And there’s lots of ways things can go wrong that have little or nothing to do with the product.

Still, I predict that Meaningful Use success is going to become a more important metric in EMR vendor M&A as time goes by. After all, the more bragging rights a company has regarding Meaningful Use success, the more they can improve the acquiring vendor’s profile. That’s gotta matter.

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November 19, 2012 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Meaningful Use
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EMR Value Diminished If Patients Can’t Access Care

A new study from the august Commonwealth Fund has just come out, offering a portrait of primary care practices in ten countries. The study had a lot of interesting data to offer, including news of primary care reforms to meet the needs of aging populations and improve chronic disease care.

One of the key data points drawn from the CF study was that two-thirds of U.S. PCPs reported using EMRs in  2012, up from 46 percent in 2009. That’s obviously a big improvement, though the U.S. still lags behind the U.K.,  New Zealand and Australia in EMR implementations and use of IT generally.

At the same time, it seems that U.S. citizens still face serious financial obstacles in getting primary care. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. physicians surveyed said that their patients often have trouble paying for care. That’s a big contrast with other countries included in the study, including Norway (4 percent), the  U.K. (13 percent) and Switzerland (16 percent). These numbers make sense when you consider that the U.S. is the only country surveyed that doesn’t offer universal health coverage.

Putting aside humanitarian reasons to be troubled by money obstacles to PCP access, there are other issues to consider. To me, the most obvious is the selection bias imposed by financial barriers to care.

Consider one of the big goals a medical home hopes to accomplish, managing chronic conditions effectively across the primary care practice’s population.  PCPs can make great use of an EMR to work on such goals, from issuing reminders to get preventive care to tracking patient progress across different demographics to test the impact of new interventions.

The thing is, the power that is a well-tuned EMR is not at its best if the interventions are mostly aimed at those who fit a certain socio-economic profile.

Admittedly, few small PCPs need to be worried about selection bias from a scientific standpoint, as they’re seldom gunning for the next journal article presentation, but looking at the country as a whole, we’re missing out on the collective learning we can generate with clinical data analytics.  It seems to me that we’re going to have to address this problem directly if we want to leverage EMRs for the greater public good.

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November 16, 2012 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Pay for Performance
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ACA Implications, Hurricane Sandy, and Interoperability — #HITsm Chat Highlights

Topic One: Obama’s re-election secures the future of the #ACA, but what changes/concessions are we likely to see during its rollout?

Topic Two: What #healthIT strengths and weaknesses did Hurricane Sandy expose?

Topic Three: What business continuity/disaster recovery strides do health providers still need to make?

 

Topic Four: A national #HIE would have come in handy during #Sandy, so why does the industry still fail to embrace interoperability?

 

 

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November 10, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare Social Media  Hospitals  Medical Devices  mHealth  Outcomes
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Could Patent Conflicts Choke mHealth Growth?

This week I caught a very interesting piece in MobiHealthNews which took a look at the possibility that the mHealth world is ripe for patent clashes.

Orion Armon, an attorney with Cooley LLP’s IP litigation practice, notes that companies in medical device, computer, networking and communications markets are busily patenting mHealth innovations, and that sooner or later, these patents will overlap.  The result: nasty turf battles which cost everyone involved boatloads of time and money.

While the number of patent lawsuits currently being filed in these industries is nowhere near the levels seen in say, the smartphone and computer  business, a few significant cases have emerged, Armon reports:

  • CardioNet filed lawsuits against MedNet Healthcare, MedTel 24, Rhythm Watch, AMI Cardiac Monitoring, ScottCare, and Ambucore Health Solutions;
  • Robert Bosch Healthcare filed lawsuits against ExpressMD, MedApps, Waldo Health, and Cardiocom; and
  • BodyMedia filed a lawsuit against Basis Science.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Consider the patent ambitions of Airstrip, a tech vendor offering a mobile patient monitoring platform. The company’s President and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Cameron Powell, told MobiHealthNews that his company’s patents cover “taking any type of physiologic data—whether that’s from a sensor in the shoe, a home monitor, a blood pressure cuff, or a monitor in the hospital—and then re-rendering it on a native or HTML5 application on a mobile device.”  (My jaw dropped when I read that one.)

Since that interview, Airstrip has filed a lawsuit against mVisum Inc. alleging that four of the other vendor’s products infringe its patent.  It’s asking the court for an injunction barring future infringement, treble damages and attorneys’ fees.  These are standard provisions in a patent lawsuit, but from where I sit they’re pretty intimidating, and if the injunction is ordered mVisum has a heck of a battle on its hands.

As provider interest in mHealth applications continues to expand, I can only imagine that the patent battles are going to get uglier and more widespread.  It’s only logical, given the explosion of innovation we’re seeing in this space. But I do hope that patent wars don’t slow the introduction of new products too much at such a critical time in the mHealth industry’s growth.

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November 2, 2012 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  EMR Technology  Medical Devices  mHealth
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Super Storms, Clouds and CollarBones – My HIT Week in Review

“Sandy” is a nickname I attribute to my mother-in-law – a sweet, caring woman who also goes by the name of “Nana” and loves to scrapbook. Her demeanor (even when riled up) is a far cry from the meteorological phenomenon forecasters have dubbed “Super Storm Sandy,” which, as of this posting, has caused 50 deaths and power outages in 17 states affecting a minimum of 8 million customers, according to a Good Morning America report.

Sandy hasn’t impacted my environs much, other than to ensure that trick-or-treating will be a bit colder than usual this far south. While it hasn’t impacted me physically (other than offering a respite from ‘round-the-clock election coverage), I have, of course, seen a flurry of healthcare IT media around disaster preparedness, ensuring security measures when natural disasters strike, and the unfortunate lessons learned when hospitals don’t think to upgrade backup generator systems before super storms strike.

Amidst the news stories that have crossed my desk in the past few days was one concerning the orthopedic center where my husband is receiving treatment for his broken collarbone. The practice – the largest of its kind in Georgia – has decided to implement Merge Healthcare’s cloud-based Merge Honeycomb Archive to “store patient images and provide a long-term disaster recovery solution.” (Their words, not mine.)

Merge Healthcare’s CEO mentions in the press announcement that “imaging accounts for up to 90% of all data stored in electronic health records. Add in privacy rules that require storage of electronic health data, including digital images, and you see how the need to securely store and share medical images has grown – specifically in the cloud.”

I suppose when natural disaster strikes, a statistic like this takes on more importance, though I’m actually surprised that imaging-related data takes up that much space. Digging through Google led me to press releases from 2005 announcing the practice had decided to implement Allscripts TouchWorks EHR, but I’m not sure how valid that information is at this point, considering its age and the absolute maze of information I found myself in regarding subsequent Allscripts product acquisitions, mergers and shut downs.

In any case, I was happy to find that my husband’s physician has access to healthcare IT tools, and his information is up in the cloud somewhere should we ever need it, which makes me feel just a little bit better about his recovery.

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November 1, 2012 I Written By

As Social Marketing Director at Billian, Jennifer Dennard is responsible for the continuing development and implementation of the company’s social media strategies for its three key properties – Billian’s HealthDATA, Porter Research and HITR.com. She is a regular contributor to a number of healthcare blogs, and currently manages the Technology Association of Georgia Health Society’s social media channels. You can find her on Twitter @SmyrnaGirl.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Healthcare  Healthcare IT
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Clinical Data Access, New Open Source EHR, and Striiv – Around Healthcare Scene

Hospital EMR and EHR

Call Me Maybe at #CHIME12

One of the most popular songs among teens recently is “Call Me Maybe.” Well, at CHIME 2012, a music video of this song was created, featuring many of the participants in #CHIME12. It’s a fun little video, and the song sure is catchy.

Senators Join Initiative to Scrutinize Meaningful Use

After four GOP leaders have demanded that HHS Katherine Sebilus account for “failures” they found with Meaningful Use. Recently, a few senators have joined in the fight as well. Several questions were raised about EMRs, Medicare, and Meaningful Use. Is this the push that was needed in order to get Congress interested in the future of EMRs?

EMR and HIPAA
SXSW Accelerator Event for Health Startups

SXSW has long been known as an amazing music, film and now IT event. In fact, many people laud the event as a great place where creative people from all industries come together. This year SXSW has a whole health IT campus and a section of their Startup Accelerator competition that’s just devoted to healthcare IT startups. It will be a great place for healthcare IT to mix with the rest of the IT startup world. Plus, I expect a number of very interesting health IT companies to launch in the SXSW accelerator.

Access to Clinical Data Too Easy Via Phone

Most doctor’s offices will verify information by asking for a name and birthdate. However, this system could easily be compromised. Is there a better way to verify this type of information, before discussing medical issues? This post talks about different ideas, and how patient portals might be the solution.

New Open Source (Free) EHR Offering Developed by A Doctor

A new open source EHR is about to be released. And it was developed by a physician. Michael Chen, MD,  the doctor behind it, was interviewed on EMR and HIPAA. He discusses why he wanted to create an open source EHR, future plans, and any challenges that might be associated with it in this post.

Happy EMR Doctor

EMR Use Improves Primary Care: New Study

While there has been some debate about if EMR improves patient care, a recent study indicates that it does; at least in some health specialties. Over 7000 patients with coronary artery disease and diabetes were studied over the course of nine months, and the results ruled in the favor of EMRs. Dr. Michael West has found in his own personal observations, EMR does indeed improve patient care as well.

Smart Phone and Health Care

Five Challenges of mHealth

While mHealth has many advantages and has improved health care in many ways, there have been some challenges that have come about. These challenges include privacy, data security, and funding.

Striiv Ups the Standard for Pedometers — Games, Challenges, and Charity Incorporated

A new generation for the classic pedometer has been created. Striiv recently released a $99 pedometer that really gives the old kind a makeover. It incorporates fitness games, goals, and a charity to convince people to get walking. For those that don’t want to spend $99 on a pedometer, the (free) mobile app is available for the iPhone, and has a lot of the same functions.

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October 28, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  EHR Recruiting  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Doctor's Blog  Healthcare  Hospitals  Meaningful Use  mHealth  Privacy
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